What, How, and Why? — The start of my career

Sharissa Kuurstra
2 min readMar 26, 2021

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At first, it wasn’t my plan to get into marketing. I always wanted to be a business translator. Helping businesses during negotiations and translating important documents. But studies like that only focus on 1 language. And I, as driven as I am, wanted to speak as many languages as possible.

So, I started with my bachelor’s program in International Business and Languages. This way, I got the opportunity to learn about business and, at the same time, learn 4 languages: English, Spanish, French, and German.

In my third year, I had to do an internship in marketing or sales. I chose to do a marketing internship at a consultancy agency in Melbourne, Australia. This is where I discovered I actually liked marketing.

I had to write blogs, created content calendars, set up marketing strategies, and checked the work of all the other interns. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a lot of feedback on my own work. So I had no idea whether I was doing it right or wrong.🤷‍♀️ But my supervisor said:

Sharissa is a highly talented, self-starting marketer with leadership skills. She is an ideas woman, and can bring a lot to the table. What stands out is her ability to always shine, smile, and see the positive in every situation.

After completing my bachelor, I started a master’s program in Business Communication and Digital Media. As a side job, I started working as Junior Content Marketer at Delaware, an IT consultancy firm. I was in charge of LinkedIn (both organic and ads), Instagram, Social Seeder (employer branding), and helped my supervisor where needed.

My content was approved and I saw the posts going live. This was such an amazing feeling. MY POSTS, ON SOCIAL MEDIA, WAUW. This gave my confidence an enormous boost. And I think this is the moment I discovered my passion for content writing and social media.😍

After this job, I worked for almost a year at an IT start-up as Content Marketer. I was in charge of all social media channels (IG, Twitter, LinkedIn, and FB), had to write blogs, created brochures and one-pagers, optimised website content. Basically, anything that had something to do with social media and content marketing.

Again, I saw my posts and blogs go live. My content for brochures, one-pagers, and the website were used. I discovered I was actually really good at what I was doing. And this made me extremely happy!😁

Now, I’m trying to share my knowledge and experiences with a wider world than just me, myself, and I. And the company I work for. I awakened my inner Content Warrior!

Nice to meet you all and hope you’ll enjoy my upcoming blogs 😊

Cheers,

Your Favourite Content Warrior — Sharissa

PS: Follow me on Twitter >>> @skuurstra

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Sharissa Kuurstra

💥 Content Warrior 🔥 Online Marketer 🍫 Chocolate Addict 🍕 Pizza Lover 🏉 Rugby Player 🐶 Proud Dog Owner 🇳🇱 Dutch